Of all the DH events in the world Kozakov is definitely worth making the trip to beautiful Czech Republic.

Since I started skating hills about 7 years ago, I had always dreamed of making this trip and I must say it was an even better experience than I had expected.

For those of you who have never been to the event, Kozakov is a 2.5-km premium race track, in the middle of the woods, close to the beautiful and classy Czech city of Turnov. It has the best pavement you have been dreaming of since you started skating, all different styles of corners, very technical and with +90 km/h straight sections.

When you're up there, it's somewhere else that you go. It doesn't specifically feel like you're on a mountain, or that you're in Santa Barbara, the state of California, or even the good ol' US of A, for that matter. When you make the ascent to the lofty peaks that make up the Santa Barbara range you leave behind all the bullshit of your day to day, and embrace a tetherless experience of being above it all. Every year the Santa Gnarbara race comes around, and every year I relish the opportunity to make a weekend out of it and spend my time in the clouds. It's a bit of a cleansing experience, a weekend of gorgeous scenic views and incline oriented skateboarding to help put the odds and ends of your life back into perspective. It's also something I don't take for granted, knowing full well I'm rather privileged to be able to live a life that allows me to experience such things. As you can probably tell by now I really enjoy those mountains. I feel safe, cozy amongst those steep cliffs, the winding ridge roads, the bathed-in-orange sunset sessions. It's like a dream you once had, but it's real, in all its glorious vividness.
[caption id="attachment_18394" align="alignnone" width="625" caption="Camping amongst the stars, skateboarding in the AM."][/caption]

Past April, we received a pair of very special guests here in Japan, Patrick Switzer and Tamara Prader, ambassadors of team Orangatang. They came here to explore and skate unknown territories, and the most important: to spread the longboard epidemic in our country.

The Longboarding community in the Philippines got together for 10 days last week for the third annual VLT, the Visayan Longboard Trilogy. This is quite an amazing series of events for community growth as it brings people from different islands all across the Philippines together for a stokeem up skate event with loads of time by the great blue ocean, living in hammocks, throwing back the worlds finest mangos, swimming with whale sharks, ripping around as scooter gangs and sharing stories with

Words and photos by MikeGirard. [Make sure to read all the way through for photos, my video, and other videos from the event!]
Although its been running for a decade, I first heard about the Broadway Bomb about 3 years ago. The Bomb is the biggest outlaw race in the world, an 8.5 mile sprint push race through New York City that attracts huge numbers of riders. The danger of the race is part of its all